Shavuot, the Jewish holiday, is almost here and during this holiday, we celebrate with a dairy meal. There are many reasons why we specifically consume dairy and not meat during this holiday, but my favorite reason is this one: The Gematria which is the numerical value of the Hebrew word for milk, חלב, is 40.
ח=8
ל=30
ב=2
The number 40 symbolizes the 40 days Moses spent on Mount Sinai receiving instructions for the entire Torah. Moses spent an additional 40 days on Mount Sinai, praying for forgiveness following the Golden Calf, and then a third set of 40 days before returning with a new set of stone tablets. The number 40 appears 3 times like the three letters of the word milk in Hebrew. You can read about the rest of the reasons here.
In this holiday, we can finally have a dairy dessert, usually we do not mix milk and meat in one meal and in most of the holidays, we celebrate with a meat meal. What could be a better way to celebrate than with a milky dessert other than cheesecake?
To make the cake look festive I decided to shape it like a tart or pie, if you want you can make the dough in a flat layer under the cheese feeling. The tart is decorated with fruits and because it is a white dish you can decorate with any color you want and also use edible flowers for a fine finish (just make sure they are safe to eat before using them). The whipped cream I piped on the cake with a st honoré nozzle to create this shape of stalks, you can decorate with any type of nozzle of course, be creative!
The dough in this recipe is the same dough I used in the chocolate tart and in the lemon raspberry tart, and I always use it when I'm making sweet tarts, I think that if you have a recipe that works for you, you need to stick to it!
To complete the dairy meal you can also serve mushroom quiche or breadsticks and I have alcoholic drinks recipes if you want to impress your family adults and guests.
So now, after you read all of that, you are ready for this festive cheese tart recipe:
Festive Cheese Tart
Ingredients
For the dough:
- ⅔ cup (150 grams) flour
- 1 stick (100 grams) cold butter, cut to cubes
- 4 tablespoon (40 grams) powdered sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 egg
For the filling:
- 1 egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
- 2 cups (500 grams) cream cheese 5% (you can use higher % if you want a more rich flavor)
- ¼ cup sugar
- 3 tablespoon cornstarch
- Zest of one lemon
For decoration:
- Whipped cream
- Fruits that you like
Instructions
- In a food processor with a steel blade, add the flour, butter, powdered sugar, vanilla, and salt, then process until a crumbly mixture is obtained.
- Add the egg and continue to process until the dough lumps are formed.
- Transfer the dough to a lightly floured work surface and form a disc shape.
- Wrap in plastic wrap and cool in the refrigerator for an hour.
- On a floured surface, roll out the dough to a 3-4 mm thick sheet and set aside the baking pan, making sure to create a right angle between the side and the base, ensuring that the edges remain high.
- Stab the dough, evenly, with a fork.
- Freeze the dough inside the pan for an hour.
- Set the oven to 170°C / 350°F fan.
- Place a sheet of heat resistant nylon or crumpled baking paper on the dough and fill with dry beans/chickpeas or special weights for baking. (This is known as “Baking blind" and is the process of baking a piecrust or other pastry without the filling.)
- Bake blind for 13 minutes.
- Remove the weights from the dough and continue baking for 5 more minutes.
- Mix all of the filling ingredients in a bowl.
- When the 5 minutes are over, pour the filling into the dough and bake for 30 minutes.
- Cool the tart at room temperature.
- Decorate with whipped cream and fruits.
This recipe is part of a blogging project, called easily Shavuot, and includes easy recipes for Shavuot.
For other recipes in the project see below: (they are written in Hebrew)
Cheesecake and lotus in individual cups with strawberry jam from the site "My Little Kitchen".
Cheese Yeast Cake from the site "Sweet Dolly".
Cheesecake cubes with mascarpone, coffee and salted caramel without baking from the "Trying in the Kitchen" site
Vegan "cheese" tryphal from the site "Desserits"
Shavuot recipes for children's from "Fingerfood"
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